Lindsey Hampton: Creativity and Balance

Holed up doing freelance graphic design work and alone in her tiny apartment, Lindsey Hampton, went for a bike ride. She passed a ceramics studio regularly on these bike rides. One day she just stopped in to give ceramics a try… just for a reason to get out of the house. She never had tried to do ceramics before and wasn’t familiar with other artists or trends in the field. That didn’t stop her from putting her own spin on this age-old art.

“I think of myself as a designer who also does ceramics.”

Many artists have crossed mediums, i.e., from photography to painting, from ceramics to weaving. Few artists have a voice that carries from medium to medium in a non-literal way, yet so strongly as Lindsey Hampton.If you go to Hampton’s website, you’ll first notice the close visual relationship between her graphic design and ceramics. The use of pastels and 1980’s geometric design elements balanced with a clear minimalism notes playfulness yet, soothing to the eye. Her unmistakeable aesthetic she attributes to being a designer at heart, “I think of myself as a designer who also does ceramics.”

Her creative process has a strong connection between her vision and what she produces, “I trust the visual part of my brain. I think of how I want things to look. It happens organically or in the moment. Some things work, and some things don’t. Whenever I try to be rigid, it doesn’t work.” Though the process is intuitive, it’s not necessarily easy. To get something right, like the placement or shape of a handle may take up to 100 tries. She also keeps an extensive journal on Tumblr, The Endless Plain of Fortune, gives you a peek into what the inspiration of her visual process; an endless scroll of a mix of art, graphic design, vintage ceramics, fashion, furniture design and lots of pink. Viewed together you see a pattern which you can also see in Hampton’s work.

This cross-disciplinary theme doesn’t stop there…multifaceted people inspire Hampton. Her heroes are people like Peter Shire, a prolific and influential Memphis style artist who worked in drawing, furniture sculpture in steel, ceramics, and glass. “[Shire] made anything look like he made it.” She enjoys seeing people who can move between mediums while maintaining their aesthetic. It’s as though you can see the essence of a person’s creativity by seeing the commonalities between mediums.

There is something to be said about people who juggle more than one discipline in their career as a creative. Mastery in one area is a full-time job, keeping more than one going simultaneously is a challenge for anyone. “Sometimes I design every day, sometimes I do ceramics every day. I can be choosy about what I do and who I sell with… Because I have a job I love I can balance things.” Hampton said of how she makes time for her multifaceted career. Although she never intended on becoming a professional ceramicist. The demand for her work came. She got busy with ceramics she can choose work she finds interesting. “I’ll always be designing something. If not ceramics it would be something else.”

Hampton went to college for graphic design and started her career by first working making concert posters for bands she knew through friends and family. She had developed an aesthetic early on, “The type of design I do mostly posters for concerts is an art-based design, I make these tiny art-pieces that function. If I had done a different type of design, [my ceramics] would have turned out differently.”

About the Studio:

Once she had started doing her ceramics, she got a job working in-house doing graphic design. This allowed her to set up a studio for her ceramic work. The office job wasn’t her favorite. However, it gave her the opportunity to establish a place hone in on her craft. Recently her studio-mate moved out allowing her to spread out. While before her space was intensely considered as to maximize the workflow, now there are places that allow for eating and a gorgeous chair for relaxing so she can feel more at home in her space. There is also a shop wall for Open Studios which she is planning to do on a regular basis. The display section is where you can visit her studio and buy finished pieces.